New Computer Method Tells How Hot a Chili Pepper Is

Would you risk at any price to get a scorched throat and terrible butt pains because of a chili? In case you wouldn't, here is a new method to discover the power of a chili pepper.

A team at the Baylor University has developed a relatively simple technique to analyze the active chemicals in the pepper that could come with more rapid and accurate data to the food industry and to those employing peppers for medical reasons, like pain relief.

The heat of a pepper is given by a group of alkaloids called capsaicinoids. 90 % of them are represented by capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin. The levels of capsaicinoid vary amongst different pepper strains, giving each individual pepper its own degree of heat.

"Capsaicinoids are the active ingredient in pepper spray, tear gas and some arthritis medications, not to mention spices and foods like salsa, so a wide range of industries could find this new approach useful," said lead researcher Dr. Kenneth Busch, professor of chemistry and co-director of the Center for Analytical Spectroscopy at Baylor.

Currently, the heat of a pepper is measured through a process named high-performance liquid chromatography, which is quite expensive and time consuming as researchers must first isolate the capsaicinoids in the extract from other present molecules.

Instead, the Baylor team employed a mathematical approach based on multivariate regression modeling. The new method uses known capsaicinoid content numbers from a series of pepper extracts and put them into a computer program. The basic numbers "train" the computer to detect subtle traits present in the spectrum linked to the capsaicinoid concentration, permitting the computer to track down the hotness chemicals in the extract even when mixed with other interfering molecules.

When the computer has been "trained" to detect those chemicals, it can recognize the hotness of other unknown peppers.
This method, based on cheminformatics, is much less expensive and more rapid than other techniques.

"Like all fundamental research, application will come over time," said Busch.